Pink Wednesday at The Elmgreen School	Jasmine in the pink

The Elmgreen School in the Pink

On Wednesday 12th of March The Elmgreen School celebrated International Women's day by holding the first Pink Wednesday.

Saturday the 8th  of March  was the official date of International Women's Day but since school wasn’t open on Saturday, we celebrated by holding a Pink Wednesday.

On Pink Wednesday we specialized in  none other than pink : we wore pink, we saw pink, we ate pink. You name it, it was pink. Our Chair of Governors even went out to buy a pink tie especially for the event.

We hosted a special assembly for the day around the theme of powerful women and science, to fit in National Science and Engineering Week. The first half of the assembly was taken by Caroline Newte−Hardie a teacher who is deeply involved in and cares a lot about International Women's day.

The other half of the assembly was hosted by Marie Nicholas, who is Subject Leader for Science at The Elmgreen School. She devoted this part of the assembly to teaching us about famous female scientists, which we all found very inspiring.

We also held a number of charity events, including a cake sale, where, naturally, all cakes had pink icing. Any staff and students who wore an item of pink clothing made a donation of at least 20p to charity. In addition, we sold patented breast cancer care pins and bracelets to raise even more money for the charity.

We raised thirty pounds and  all proceeds made during the course of the day were donated to breast cancer care to help all the women as well as men who also can, albeit rarely, suffer from breast cancer.

One woman can change many things, many women can change everything.

The official colour for International Women’s day is purple and we know that for many women pink is not ideal and some may even see it as a sexist stereotype. However, we chose pink because, as well as celebrating all the fantastic things about being a woman, we were also trying to raise money for charity.

Here at The Elmgreen School it is felt that it is very important to celebrate important events like this. The idea to celebrate the day like this came from the students. However, staff were very keen to be a part of it.

International Women’s Day exists for the same reason Mothers' Day or Fathers' Day exist, to give a certain sector of society recognition for their contribution.

Why support a breast cancer charity?
Breast cancer is not common in younger women and the vast majority of cases occur in women aged over 50.

Symptoms vary from lumps, swelling and skin changes, and many cases have no symptoms at all.

Breast cancer is the fifth most common cancer in the world and obviously the worst results can be death.

But with the help of breast cancer research finding new treatments and cures for breast cancer many women survive and make a full recovery who would have died only a few years ago.

In this article we speak to Jenny Granville who has made a full recovery from breast cancer and is here for an interview.

“I found out I had Breast cancer in 2006 which was a surprise because I felt fine. I tried lots of alternative treatments like chemotherapy and radiotherapy I also went to see a nutritionist about eating healthily and getting enough exercise  but I learned that the treatments actually made you feel more ill. I got a lot of help from various charities including Breast Cancer Care and Breakthrough. There was this one charity which would give you a makeover and gave you gift bags full of gorgeous make up for when you weren’t feeling pretty. It really helped. In the end I chose to have my breast removed which seemed effective and now I have to remain on a drug called aromidex for another four years to prevent it growing back”.

So as you can see breast cancer care helps benefit all women with breast cancer and men too to help them get through it and feel better.